Reggae singer Richie Stephens on Saturday night denied that he raped a 27-year-old Singapore entertainer, General Ling, who was formerly a part of his entourage.
The artist best known for his singles like “Weakness for Sweetness” said the woman had accused him of rape, and the matter was reported to police in Australia, but he was not charged.
Richie Stephens admitted that the woman was on tour with him in 2019, but he did not deny that he had sex with her or had been involved with her in any way. He instead spoke to the allegations.
“Ms Elaine Lim made some allegations, some of what she said is true but I am here to tell you what is true. One, she was on tour with me in 2019 in Australia, two, she made a formal report to the police against me, and three, she did a rape kit. What she did not tell you, a thorough investigation was done by the Australian police, I was detained, they took a statement from me, they took a statement from her and other people and there were cameras in the vicinity,” he began in an almost four-minute video being circulated online.
The reggae singer said that he had retained high-powered Attorney-at-Law, Christopher Townsend, who has been advising him. He said that his accuser was trying to use the allegations to make a name for herself.
“While I was detained, I called my attorney Christopher Townsend who advised me what to do, and at the end of the investigation, they found her allegations to be simply baseless. You know what is true, I am really sorry for her, to know that she would go that far to try and get some recognition. We’re living in a time where they believe that likes is far more important than the truth and we’re here to bring the truth out,” he said.
Lim made the rape accusations on Thursday via a YouTube video titled “TW: The Truth about Richie Stephens in Australia 2019,” where she claimed he raped her.
Her video, which is 25 minutes long, details the experience which she says that the incident happened on the 12th and 13th of November 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. She says that she was speaking on video because she wanted the truth to be known and that whatever was done to her to be known.
“I also want to tell the other survivors who may be watching this video, that its ok to hold [inaudible] accountable.” She says that she made a police report “immediately” after the incident, and a rape kit was done.
Lim says that Stephens did not listen to her when she told him “no.” She said that they were staying together in an Airbnb with separate rooms, and they did not have a relationship.
Lim says that the first time she met Stephens, he “tried to stick his tongue down my throat. When he did it I closed my mouth, didn’t allow it, but as Asians we are told to respect our culture. Only thing I did was I asked my friend ‘is this the way of Jamaican culture’?.”
Lim became emotional as she said that he raped her after her friend left to go to the studio, and she stayed behind to edit a music video.
“I stayed behind to do my work, I stayed behind to edit a music video I was behind on. We trusted him enough that no funny business was gonna be tried when I was left alone with him….he did take advantage of the fact that I was alone with him during which he was having phone calls and he was talking about his mother she was having surgery.”
She said that Stephens appeared to get emotional over the news regarding his mother and agreed to a hug. “I agreed to a hug but what I didn’t agree after that was how he ignored my pleas to stop when he went further. When he tried to lie on my tummy, when he tried to hold me down, every single time I said ‘I’m not comfortable, stop’, he said relax.”
She added that Richie Stephens assaulted her several times using his finger and then penetrated her. She said he did it three times.
“I couldn’t fight back. I was just wishing that my friend would come back…”
She added that over the course of the tour in Indonesia, Stephens tried to kiss her and touch her but respected her boundaries when she said no until they reached Australia.
Lim said she became a shell of herself after the incident. She added that as a survivor, she was also blamed for the incident.
“Not all that glitters is gold, Not all that shines is the light, you can say it wasn’t told, but when the truth is out people will know. Disclaimer: I want to clarify that dressing is a non-issue on such cases. In fact, the responsibility is never on the survivor, but heavily dependent on the perp’s intention and self-control. This is an act of control and blatant disregard of a person. No, is a no. There’s nothing else to it,” Lim said.
Meanwhile, Stephens has denied the claims by Lim that he had spoken to Jamaican media about the incident, where he denied raping her.
“She claimed I came back to Jamaica and ran to the media and give them fabricated stories, I have not done one interview, I haven’t posted a video. The only thing is that my attorney Christopher Townsend wrote a letter which I posted to my IG,” Stephens said.
Stephens is one of Reggae’s biggest artists, with notches on his belt for his contribution to Rihanna’s smash hit ‘Work,’ which had sampled his 1998 Sail Away rhythm.
Stephens further called out Lim and labeled her YouTube video a “staged performance” and that “clearly, she ah look a buss,” he said.
The post that Lim is talking about is one made by Stephens in November 2019 in which he addressed the claims on his Instagram page that a member of his tour entourage had accused him of sexual assault during his Jamaican Flava tour in Australia.
Stephens had said that allegations were untrue and that the person, who had accused him, had been taken off the tour.
Meanwhile, Richie Stephens attorney, Christopher Townsend, in an interview with the Jamaica Observer, said that his client was innocent.
He went further to warn artists about people around them with “ambitions.”
“As his lawyer, he had contacted me early in the day when the authorities detained him. He used his one phone to call me, I gave him instructions on how to treat with it, he followed suit, the investigations were quite thorough, as he indicated, and at the end of the day, the evidence gathered pointed equivocally to his innocence,” Townsend stated.
“I invite stars like Richie to be careful of some persons who want to be in your space to further their likes on their social media pages and to further their own gain. A politician of good repute suffered at the hands of his friends who posted a video of him recently. This is not the same situation but in this day and age, there is a trend where people appear to do things to see how many likes they can get, to see their numbers climb on their YouTube pages. They are getting the satisfaction of seeing how many people like them at the expense of people’s reputations,” he warned.
